Overcome paralysis: Douglas senior Jessica Vega finds ways to give back

MINDEN - The word "adversity" tends to get attached to a wide variety of situations in sports.

Whether it be an injury, a coaching change, outside circumstances or even something as fleeting as a rough stretch during a game - "adversity" is something every athlete must deal with at some point, to some extent.

Championship teams, as any coach will say, are the teams that can overcome - teams that just seem to find a way to get past whatever situation arises.

That's why, when Douglas High girls' soccer coach Lorraine Fitzhugh looked for an emotional leader to step up as her team headed down the stretch of its eventual state championship run this year, she knew one player in particular she could count on.

Douglas senior Jessica Vega, after all, knew a thing or two about real adversity.

Vega became an anchor of the Tigers' midfield over the past two state championship seasons, scoring 13 goals and dishing out 10 assists while earning all-league honors along the way.

What stood out even more than her athletic ability, though, was a composure that most teenagers simply don't possess.

"We had a couple tough years, especially this year because everyone was really gunning for us after we won last year," Vega said. "We had some ups and some downs.

"But I always just felt like, 'We can do this. If we pull together we can go far.' I guess it just comes from realizing that when something so big happens in your life, all these little problems - things that happen on the playing field - are just so tiny."

It was a little less than four years ago that Vega was unable to walk, much less play soccer. There was never any guarantee that she'd be able to do either again.

It was during that time that the "I can do this" phraseology got hard-wired into her brain.

"She had sheer determination to get through what she did," Fitzhugh said. "I am very proud of her on and off the field."

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS

It was May 2007.

Vega, then an eighth-grader at Carson Valley Middle School, was lying in a hospital bed at Renown Medical Center in Reno as an unknown disease tore away at the myelin sheath surrounding her nerves.

With paralysis quickly working its way from the extremities toward Jessica's vital organs, doctors informed her mother, Rhonda, that they were in need of a large dosage of a medicine called Intravenous Gamma globulin.

"The doctor told me they wanted to give this medicine to her and I said, 'OK, let's do it,'" Rhonda Vega said. "He kind of paused and said it wasn't really that easy.

"They didn't have it. And there was no guarantee we'd be able to get it."

Intravenous Gamma globulin, or IVIG, as the Vegas quickly learned, isn't exactly a medicine one can just pick up at the local pharmacy, or even necessarily the nearest hospital.

It's manufactured from blood platelets, taken from donated plasma. On average, the medicine is only good for several days after its creation before the plateletes expire.

"We didn't understand how rare it was," Jessica said. "They were telling us that the week before, a guy had been in need of it and they hadn't been able to get the full amount he needed."

After several frenzied minutes on the phone, doctors were able to obtain the dosage Jessica needed from out of state.

It was flown in within a half an hour.

"They just hooked her up to this big glass bottle," Rhonda said. "They said it would run for 12 hours and, best-case scenario, it would stop the paralysis from running to her vital organs.

"It stopped at her quads, toward her hips and at her biceps almost to her arm pits."

Jessica had been given a dose of 55 units. Each unit cost $1,000 and the entire dosage represented the plasma donations of more than 100 people.

"We started talking right then, when we learned how many people had played a part in saving her life, how important it would be when the time came to give back," Rhonda said.

The sheer number of anonymous donors that had filled that glass bottle was something that stuck with Jessica from the outset.

"It was so amazing to me," she said. "I just kept thinking, it's a good thing those people donated. From that moment on, I always felt like it was just the right thing to do, to give back."

It became part of Jessica's drive to recover.

"We talked about it in terms of 'When you get better' and 'When you can walk again,'" Rhonda said. "That's when we can give this back for someone else."

But in the midst of that resolve, the Vega family still had to try to wrap their minds around what it was Jessica was supposed to be getting better from.

AN 'UNKNOWN' DISEASE

"That's the only time during everything that happened to me that I really got scared, that time I was in the emergency room," Jessica said. "They explained to me that I needed an IV, which I understood because it was simple.

"But there were all these big names and things that I hadn't heard before and couldn't understand. I was getting all these blood tests and they were testing me for muscle disorders."

Jessica had recently received the second of three injections for the Gardisil vaccine, which helps prevent human papillomavirus.

Rhonda had called a vaccine hotline to ask about some of Jessica's symptoms - extreme weakness, fatigue - and it was suggested that Jessica may be falling into a small number of vaccine recipients who contract an acute autoimmune condition called Guillain-Barre syndrome or GBS.

While no concrete evidence has been found linking the vaccine and Guillain-Barre, one of the leading causes of acute non-trauma-induced paralysis in the world, the syndrome did match many of the symptoms Jessica was experiencing.

Rhonda got off the phone and asked the doctor about it.

"He said, 'Yeah, I think that is what it is," Jessica said. "He diagnosed me with Guillain-Barre right there. That's when they started looking for IVIG to treat it.

"That, right then, is the only time I can remember feeling real fear. I didn't know what it meant, or what was going to happen. A lot of people just haven't heard about this disease. We didn't know about it.

"It was tearing the sheath off my nerves. That sheath is what carries the signals from your brain to your feet telling you to move. That's what was stopping me from walking."

The dosage IVIG stopped the movement of Guillain-Barre syndrome in Jessica's body, but it left her with no movement in her legs and extremely limited movement in her arms.

"They told us flat out, we'd get whatever we'd get in terms of recovery," Rhonda said. "There's no rhyme or reason to it. She may get everything back, she may get nothing back. She may even get just a portion back."

For the entire Vega family, it became a matter of waiting. And working. All of the time.

LONG ROAD BACK

Jessica spent a week and a half at Renown and then moved to Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center for a month.

From there, she checked into outpatient physical therapy through Carson Tahoe.

Jessica was having to literally start over from square one.

"They say the GBS stands for 'Get Better Slowly,'" Rhonda said. "Even after hearing that, I don't think we fully grasped how long and hard it would be.

"It was so slow, there were times I wasn't even sure she was making progress."

It was 13 weeks before Jessica was even able to move a toe.

"They were hooking her up to these electro-machines and sticking needles in her legs to gauge some sort of reaction out of her muscles," Rhonda said. "I remember they had it cranked up to 300 watts, as far as the machine would go, and they were getting zero response.

"They were getting 50 percent out of her arms, but nothing out of her legs."

Slowly, Jessica inched back toward her former self.

She spent a month and a half in a wheelchair, and then graduated to a walker with bulky leg braces.

As more time passed, she got rid of the walker and managed just with the leg braces.

Jessica would spend over two hours every day hooked up to an E-stim machine - half an hour each on her legs and arms in the morning and then again at night - in an effort to stimulate the myelin growth on her nerves.

She utilized a back massager and put ice cubes on her legs every night.

"At home she would take her leg braces off and it was like watching a toddler," Rhonda said. "She'd try to take a couple steps and she'd fall flat on her face. That happened quite often. But she kept pushing. Her physical therapy went from the moment she woke up each day to the moment she laid back down in bed at night. There was no stopping her."

Jessica said it was a matter of focus.

"I was just focused on the moment, getting back on my feet," Jessica said. "I never thought about not getting better. I never had the thought that I could be like this for the rest of my life. That didn't really register with me.

"I guess I just thought I'd get better."

Getting better, though, included a wholesale re-education in, well, everything.

"Even just to get up and get dressed was such an endeavor," Jessica said. "Brushing my hair, taking a shower was an hour and a half process. Even just getting up and out of bed took so much effort.

"There were so many simple things I'd taken for granted before. Soccer was kind of far down on the list."

Oh yeah, soccer.

FOR LOVE OF THE GAME

Vega had been playing soccer since she was 4 years old.

While plenty of other activities - skiing, basketball, horseback riding, dirt bike racing - occupied her life, soccer was the one, true passion she had year-round.

By the time high school soccer tryouts started during the summer of 2007, Vega was walking, but not running.

"There was a preseason conditioning the team was having and I just wanted to get out there again," Vega said. "I got out of the car, and it was hard just watching. I hung out while they were warming up and I remember hearing one girl complain about not wanting to play a particular position.

"I was thinking, 'I'll do it!' I would've played anywhere, done anything, just to be able to play the game again. It was good to be out there again, but it was hard to watch.

"From that point on, I started thinking I actually could get better. I was a freshman and I had a couple years to get back into it."

Vega served as a team manager that season and got to work out with the team during practice.

"I think that was a huge help, just getting to be back out there," she said.

Those first couple times back on the field were adventures in their own right.

"The last thing she got back was the feeling in her toes and in the balls of her feet," Rhonda said. "She couldn't raise up on the balls of her feet.

"It was kind of sad at first, when she started trying to play soccer again. She looked almost like an ostrich running around, kind of lurpy. Girls would just blow right past her on the field.

"I kept thinking, 'this isn't going to work.'"

No one told Jessica that. Not that she would've listened.

"It was awesome," Jessica said of being back on the field. "As much as I loved soccer before, I loved it even more having essentially lost it and gotten it back.

"It was just like everything else in my life that I'd taken for granted. I was so appreciative, just to be able to play again. I started to really understand the idea of not taking things for granted during that period of my life."

Jessica spent evenings after practice walking in sand, picking up beans with her toes, standing on the balls of her feet while balancing herself on the counter and kicking every size of ball there was to kick.

Within five months, she was able to function normally on the field.

"I just played," she said. "I never worried about getting hurt or anything. Thoughts like that didn't register. I just went with the flow. You don't worry about getting hurt after coming back from something like that."

Jessica made the Douglas junior varsity soccer team as a sophomore and made the jump to varsity as a junior, where she played out her high school career as a starter.

"Everyone reflects back on it at different times," Rhonda said. "The first time she'd gone out there I had to try so hard to not to cry. As time went on, I started to see how it affected other people.

"So many people would come up to us during games and make it a point to tell us how amazed they were by our daughter. Especially the people that had seen her when she was sick.

"People would say 'I just want to cry thinking about how far she has come.' There was one night this last season where it seemed like Jessica was just running faster than she ever had.

"I remember just getting this lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. It was a wonderful moment."

GIVING BACK

When Jessica turned 17 this past year, she immediately made good on her vow to give back to the system that had saved her life.

She donates blood every chance she gets, usually between sports seasons, and will eventually donate the plasma needed to make the IVIG once her body will allow it.

She's become a guest speaker for United Blood Services and an active unofficial recruiter of new donors.

"She donates all the time and she is always there for us," said Alana Ladd Ross, the donor recruitment supervisor for United Blood Services in Carson City. "Last week she came in to donate and brought three people to donate with her. She's a natural and her story touches so many people.

"The amazing thing to me is that she doesn't just excuse herself because she's a kid. She has taken an active involvement in giving back to this community in a tangible way.

"There are so many stories like Jessica's out there, so many people in need in emergency situations. It's the community's responsibility to make sure we take care of our own, and she fully grasps that concept."

Vega's story, and ensuing commitment to blood donation, so touched Ladd Ross that she nominated Jessica for the Fenwal Donor Hall of Fame this year.

Last month, Vega was inducted into the hall of fame during a ceremony in Carson City.

"It was pretty amazing," Vega said. "When Alana first called me about it, she had to explain what was happening. Only 12 people in the country are inducted every year out of hundreds of nominations."

Last summer, fellow Douglas High student Dillon McKenzie suffered a spinal cord injury in a diving accident.

Seeing McKenzie at school in a wheelchair (he has since begun to walk again) reminded Vega of a visit she'd received while she was still in the hospital.

Then University of Nevada freshman Jack Maloney, a Carson High graduate and Guillain-Barre survivor, showed up to Vega's room to encourage her.

"When he heard about my story, he came and saw me," Vega said. "I remember how cool it was to see someone who had been through what I was going through. It was encouraging to see that he had gotten back on his feet and that he had recovered. It boosts your confidence. He became a huge part in my determination to get better."

So Vega struck up a friendship with McKenzie.

"I just started talking to him," she said. "He didn't know my story. He told me what had happened to him and how they told him he wouldn't walk again. After he told me how his recovery has gone, I said 'You'll be able to walk again.'

"He just wants to play football again by his senior year. I think he will."

Vega has been working as a tech at BodyWise Physical Therapy and Fitness in Minden, the same facility where she had performed her own rehab.

She said she isn't quite sure what her next move is but eventually she would like to become a CareFlight nurse or EMT.

"If I could play soccer somewhere in college, that would be really cool," she said. "I've had some interest, but I need to get a highlight tape together and sent out.

"Eventually, I just want to do something in the medical field. Something where hopefully I can help save lives.

"I'm just so thankful to everyone. This whole community came together and did so much for my family and for me. I'm just very grateful for everyone's help and encouragement along the way."

ON THE WEB

To see Vega's story, along with the other Fenwal Hall of Fame inductees, visit www.fenwalinc.com

DETAILS

Anyone interested in donating blood or plasma can contact United Blood Services at 775-887-9111 or visit their location in Carson City at 256 E. Winnie Lane.

Joey Crandall can be reached at (775) 782-5121, ext. 212.